Frame-panel houses

Many people dream of a warm, cozy, beautiful and reliable home. However, its construction, as a rule, is delayed for many years, and those who want to prolong the dubious pleasure, investing fabulous money in an endless process, are becoming less and less..

As the experience of our closest northern neighbors or residents of distant, but by no means hot, Canada shows, housing does not have to have meter-long walls to keep warm and consume tons of diesel fuel for heating. The Finns, for example, have long taken a fancy to the well-designed elite frame-panel houses, lined with stone on the outside and lined with clapboard from the inside. Over the half-century history of their intensive construction, the aborigines of the West were able to appreciate the quality of such buildings and the standard of living in them. More than three quarters of the population of Canada, the USA and Japan have made their choice in favor of such designs, and in Scandinavia and Germany they are the main ones..

The boom of frame-panel buildings all over the world was facilitated by several factors at once: minimal cost, ease of assembly, ease of installation of communications, excellent thermal properties, a variety of architectural forms and finishing options.

Such houses quickly warm up, it is easier to maintain optimal thermal conditions in them. Even in bitter frosts, when the heating is turned off, the room temperature drops by only a few degrees. All wooden buildings are prone to freezing to one degree or another, but frame-panel buildings are not. Thanks to a special construction system, they, unlike high-rise buildings that mainly heat the environment, do not exchange heat with the street – they are comfortable in winter and cool in summer. Frame buildings are much more economical than wooden ones – heating costs in them are 2 to 3 times less. And this is important, since energy resources are constantly getting more expensive. The uniqueness of the technology lies in the fact that construction costs are reduced not due to savings on quality, but due to the use of modern materials and original engineering solutions. In monetary terms, this means that with equal indicators of thermal conductivity 1 sq. m, the walls of a frame-panel house are 1.3-1.5 times cheaper than 1 sq. m walls of a log.

The main bearing element of the panel structure is a wooden frame made of thick boards or ordinary timber. It gives it the necessary stability and is able to withstand significant loads. So, during a strong earthquake in Kyoto, frame-panel houses were practically the only ones in the city that were not destroyed and proved their survivability even in the extreme conditions of a natural disaster.

The general scheme of building a building can be divided into the following stages: installation of transverse structures of load-bearing walls, additional fastening with wooden elements at the corners, which provides rigidity, connection of the frame with ceilings and its tight filling with facing and heat-insulating materials.

Earthworks at the zero cycle are minimized by the insignificant mass of frame-panel houses – they are 5-6 times lighter than brick ones. Foundations, depending on the type of soil on the site, can be columnar, lightweight tape or in the form of a reinforced slab for the entire area of ​​the building.
The industrial technology that most fully corresponds to the concept of a warm and cheap home is the factory method of manufacturing panels. Such high-quality and inexpensive structures for year-round living are still poorly represented on the Russian real estate market, although the demand for them is huge. The only difference from individual projects is that the frame and walls are assembled, as in a large constructor, from large-sized panels and unified elements. As the main building material (over three quarters of the total volume), pine is used that has undergone a special treatment, which provides not only drying in special chambers, but also the application of coatings to protect against precipitation and pests, impregnation from fire, painting in any color, etc..

Well-trained personnel are engaged in mechanized production of wall panels (sandwich) on the latest equipment and assembly tables at the factory. Finished products are subject to careful control, which allows achieving high performance and does not create problems with installation – the panels are joined where necessary and do not need additional adjustment. House kits consist of small-sized modules that are lightweight, which excludes the use of special equipment during assembly. All this reduces the time of construction work at the customer’s site, and also reduces the cost of individual units and parts and significantly – the final price. Interior decoration can be done in accordance with the wishes and tastes of a particular person: in a rustic style, renovated, etc. The cost of 1 sq. M. m of frame-panel cottage ranges from $ 200-250 (in houses made of rounded logs – from $ 300, from aerated concrete – from $ 400). Construction time – 2-3 months.

Prefabricated panel houses have only one drawback – the lack of architectural delights and the relative uniformity of models. The construction of frame structures according to individual projects is more expensive, but it makes it possible to realize the most daring wishes of the customer.

The finished frame, repeating the contours of the future cottage, is faced from the outside with chipboard, OSB or cement-bonded particle board, and from the inside – with clapboard, plywood or hardboard.

With the help of plasterboard or gypsum fiber sheets, you can create any interiors. They are plastic in a wet state and lend themselves well to processing in a dry state, do not burn (which does not require the use of fire retardants when choosing non-combustible coatings) and are ideal for interior cladding. The surface is completely flat and is suitable for finishing with wood, paint, structural elements, glass wallpaper, etc..

Mineral insulation is placed between the two outer layers of the cladding. The presence of high-quality vapor barrier is an extremely important point – this provides residents with a comfortable living environment and prevents the appearance of dampness and condensation, and, consequently, mold and house fungus. With vapor barrier, moisture evaporates unilaterally onto the street, which does not allow its level to rise inside the room, prevents its penetration from the outside and thereby excludes freezing and blowing of the joints. At the same time, the house breathes, there is no need for additional ventilation and wood processing from rot.

Mineral materials are also used as internal insulation materials, which are the finest fibers (from 6 microns thick) of natural and chemically neutral rocks of inorganic origin. They have excellent heat and sound insulation properties and are lighter than any other fibrous substances. Mineral wool does not burn, does not absorb moisture, its thermal conductivity is extremely low (from 0.029 W / (m • deg.), That is, it is 4 times warmer than pine (from 0.14 W / (m • deg.), Brickwork – almost 25 times (from 0.67 W / (m • deg.)! Insulation made of mineral rocks 250 mm thick is comparable to brickwork 1.5 m thick.

Frame-panel houses do not shrink at all, and this is their undoubted advantage. After the erection of the rack-and-frame structure, you can immediately proceed to the cladding, insulation and final polishing of the surfaces. Therefore, turnkey construction is carried out in fantastically short terms: from one day – for a small country house or sauna, a week – for houses measuring 6 x 8 m, up to 50-60 days – for a prestigious two-story mansion with a sloping roof, bay windows and garage. In addition, the construction of any of these buildings does not require heavy equipment and a large team of builders, and the installation of a frame-panel house, even on a long-lived site, will not be a fatal phenomenon for growing garden crops.

In the panel building on the frame, all communications are hidden under the cladding (in a double metal hose or a corrugated hose), so there is no need to cut grooves, gouge holes in the walls with their subsequent putty and plastering. This saves money, time and nerves, facilitates access to electrical wiring, antenna and telephone cables, and plumbing. This way of laying life support systems is safe, cheap and convenient: they are available, they can be moved at any time, and at minimal cost..

Outside, a variety of options for finishing the facade are possible: facing brick, stone, decorative plaster, siding, block house clapboard imitating a bar or log, etc. Frame technology is good because it allows you to put houses for every taste and color, inexpensive, but at the same time of high quality and meeting all the requirements for modern housing.

Such a variety is available not only to wealthy people, but also to representatives of the middle class, and the flexibility of frame-panel technology is able to satisfy any requests for architectural expressiveness and internal layout of premises.